Do we need more actual NEWS, though, more about the candidates on the issues, or is there room for that as well as for the commentary?

I think an argument a lot of bloggers (including this one) would make is that very little of what comes from professional press surrounding political campaigns is actually news. A few examples:

Is it relevant to his potential job performance that Barack Obama is a smoker?

Is it relevant to her potential job performance that Hillary Clinton cried at a campaign stop?

Is a Chuck Norris endorsement really going to deliver votes to Mike Huckabee?

These are all topics that professional press have covered in the presidential campaign at exhaustive length that I don’t think are particularly newsworthy. That’s not at all meant to deny that information comes from the professional press that is unique and newsworthy; just that there’s not all that much relative to the deluge of fluff and opinion that fills the 24-hour news cycle.

Most information of substance about a candidate I can learn watching the candidate’s videos and reading their web sites. Professional press fills in some gaps. Blogs fill in a few more. Taken together, they provide context.

There’s also a whole lot of noise coming from all of those sources that makes it hard to find the good stuff sometimes. I think the quicker we — candidates, professional press, and bloggers — realize we’re all complicit in the noise machine, the quicker we can get to a more productive discussion of how we can do better in our respective roles.